1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an order-receiving and delivery system concerning a packaging medium or packing material(s), which is based on whole ordering and delivery processes involving an initial ordering stage where a client places an order with a desired packing material(s) suited for neatly packing an article along its outer shape, and a final delivery stage where a resulting packing material(s) is/are delivered to the client.
2. Description of Prior Art
Typically, a packaging medium or packing material is used to cover and pack an industrial commodity or article before shipment thereof, so that the article is protected against a great impact and damages when being subjected to drop and vibration in transit.
The packing material itself varies in required specifications, raw materials used and structure, depending on the kind of commodity or article to be wrapped or packed by the packing material. For instance, in the case of audio goods, personal computers, display units or the like, a commonly used packing material is a foam buffer material (made of foam polystyrene) with a proper elastic property. Usually, some pieces of such foam buffer materials are attached to the corners and edges of each of those articles before packing it.
Also, to package high-precision instruments and parts, including liquid crystal display units, a particular tray with anti-static-electric property is employed, which has plural uneven areas to receive and retain the local parts of each of those goods against impact and vibration in transit
FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram illustrating a conventional order and delivery process concerning the packing materials. According thereto, it is a common practice that a client 2 places an order with a manufacturer 6 for desired packing materials, as indicated by the solid arrows, and the manufacturer 6, upon receiving the order, manufactures ordered packing materials. Then, resulting packing materials are delivered from the manufacturer to the client 2, as indicated by the dashed arrows. Among the manufacturers 6, some of them (at 66) have their own designers and high designing technology to create various suitable packing materials, but in most cases, many of the manufacturers do not have such captive designers and sufficient designing expertise.
In designing a packing material, a designer has to consider a good aesthetic appearance of packing material a less cost in manufacturing the packing material, and a certain durability of resulting packing material, such as a resistance to impact, vibration and wear, as well as an improved packing efficiency and usability thereof. Normally, the process for designing such packing material is based on a typical two-dimensional designing, such as a hand-writing preparation of drawings or a computerized drawings preparation based on two-dimensional CAD (Computer Aided Design).
However, the foregoing conventional ordering and delivery processes have been with the problem that specific demands and requirements posed by a client for ordered packing material(s) are not precisely reported on to a designer because the client""s demands are firstly treated by a packing material dealer or manufacturer and might be changed from what the client has expected, as a result of which, it is in most cases difficult to obtain a desired form of packing material that satisfies the client. Another problem with this process is that the manufacturer, who has received the order from the client, needs to contact the designer and request him or her to work on a packing material design, which therefore takes it extremely much time for a resultant packing material to be delivered to the client and inevitably increases the costs and price of packing material.
Also, at the stage where the designer attends to designing an ordered packing material, it is quite often the case that the client requests altering the design in the middle of the designer""s work or immediately after his or her completion of designing work. Since the designing process requires a great deal of labor and a considerable amount of time at the designer""s part, it is actually difficult for the designer to alter even a small part of the completed designs. Indeed, this partial alteration of design makes it annoyingly difficult for the designer to adjust the whole design in consistency with the altered part of design, and further raises a serious time-consuming problem which will force the manufacturer to extend delivery another date or month, with the result that a grave consequence and trouble may be caused in the trusted and good relation with the client.
Especially, some high-precision mechanical parts may require designing even at the initial stage of developing the corresponding new prototype products, in which case, a sudden alteration is quite often requested as to their specifications and shapes. This may result in the designer having spent much time and labor in vain for his or her works, and therefore, an improvement has been desired to the conditions and environments surrounding the client and designer in order to materialize direct and smooth exchanges of information between them.
On the other hand, there is the concern that a competitor dealer or manufacturer skilled in this particular packaging field will pretend to be an ordinary orderer, placing an order with a target packaging manufacturer in an attempt to gather any information on the designs for new packing materials. For, anyone with certain expertise in designing the packing materials and packing technology will be able to easily produce a similar packing material to the original one.
Recently, there have been increasing demands for new packing materials to pack any new product that will prevail in the market, such as new high-precision instruments including liquid crystal display units. Packing material manufacturers are also desired to produce more inexpensive and more reliable packing materials. This indeed requires a sustained improvement of designer""s ability and it depends on a designer""s own long experiences and many year""s accumulation of design information, which is in a way a barrier against quick innovation of packing technology at the side of small and medium packing material manufacturers and will also raise the difficulty for them to find and increase new clients.
In order to solve the above-stated problems, an improved system for order-receiving and delivery of packaging medium is contemplated in the present invention. It is therefore a primary purpose of the present invention to provide an improved system for order-receiving and delivery of a packaging medium adapted to package an article, which includes an ordering step where a client places an order with an order receiver for the packaging medium; a designing step where a designer creates a design of the ordered packaging medium according to conditions and requirements proposed by the client; a manufacturing step where a packaging medium manufacturer manufactures a packaging medium on basis of the design as well as the client""s conditions and requirements; and a delivering step where a resulting packaging medium thus manufactured is delivered to the client, characterized in that:
the designer is at least provided with:
a connection and communication means enabling the designer to receive and transmit a data from and to the client;
a terminal server including: an authentication server which, responsive to an access of the client, operates to determine whether an ID of the client is validated or not; and an extended authentication database which stores and controls a basic data transmitted from the client, as one record unit, together with one individual client information on the particular client; and
an arithmetic unit for processing and converting the basic data into a design data; and
the client is provided with:
a connection and communication means capable of establishing a connection to the terminal server; and
an individual ID that qualifies the client to have an authorized access to the terminal server,
wherein the client takes at least one or more actions to check to see whether the design data complies with the conditions and requirements proposed by the client, or not.
In a first aspect of the invention, the above mentioned data may comprise a basic data containing an information for design about the packaging medium, and the basic data may be automatically subjected to arithmetic computing by the arithmetic unit or subjected to arithmetic processing by the arithmetic unit and/or a manual processing, so that the basic data is converted into a design data.
In a second aspect of the invention, payment is effected from the client via the order receiver to the packaging medium manufacturer in settlement of the charges for the resulting packaging medium that has been delivered to the client.
In a third aspect of the invention, the designer and order receiver may be identical in entity with each other.
In a fourth aspect of the invention, the designer and packaging medium manufacturer may be identical in entity with each other.
In a fifth aspect of the invention, the client, prior to connecting to the terminal server, may at least obtain the individual ID and a program software from the designer, which program software is adapted for allowing connection of the client to the terminal server.
In a sixth aspect of the invention, the client, prior to connecting to the terminal server, may obtain a recording medium from the designer, which recording medium contains at least the individual ID and program software.
In a seventh aspect of the invention, there may be provided a designing process wherein the terminal server has a specification format provided therein, on the basis of which, a basic data is inputted in the extended authentication database, the basic data containing an information for design about the packaging medium, and the client may establish connection to the terminal server and input the basic data via the specification format in the extended authentication database of the terminal server, whereby the basic data is transmitted from the client to the designer.
In an eighth aspect of the invention, in connection with the designing process stated in the forgoing seventh aspect, the basic data is converted into a design data, and the client, after having established connection to the terminal server, may check to see whether the design data complies with requirements and conditions proposed by the client, or not, on the terminal server.
In a ninth aspect of the invention, the program software may include: a function for allowing connection to the terminal server; a function for creating a basic data which contains an information for design about the packaging medium; and a function for decoding and reconstituting said design data into an appropriate form of data readable and viewable by the client.
In a tenth aspect of the invention, in connection with the system stated in the foregoing ninth aspect, there may be provided a designing process wherein the client may creates the basic data, using the program software, thereafter establishes connection to the terminal server, and transmits the thus-created basic data to the designer.
In an eleventh aspect of the invention, in connection with the tenth aspect above, the client may receive the design data from the designer and check to see whether the design data complies with requirements and conditions proposed by the client, or not, via the program software.
Other various features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from reading of the descriptions hereinafter, with reference to the annexed drawings.